IB's Short Inventory

B

Babak

I know we've mentioned this before but I haven't read anything that would make me feel better about the situation. It seems to persist and follow this pattern:

1] I find a stock that I would love to short to kingdom come

2] IB does not have it in their short inventory

3] The stock enters into a death spiral

4] Near the bottom (around 80-90% off high) it miraculously shows up on IB's shortable list

5] I'm basically left to fume (or count backwards...10..9...8...)

Recent example attached [Diomed Holdings-this was a no brainer short, and that's why it gets me upset so much]

This is just ridiculous. Could IB please make an option on their next poll to see how many others feel the same?
---------------------------------------------
Previous thread:
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1668&perpage=6&pagenumber=1
 

Attachments

babak,
perhaps if it was such a layup, others beat you to the available inventory and covered when it approached the lows. If you care to send me a PM with the date you first tried to borrow, I can try to ask someone to track down the stock loan availability/history during the period in question.
 
Babak

Same thing here at scottrade, every time when
there's a good short in the works, I place my
order, come's back can do. Now when there's
a stock you like to short and it's going up. hey
they have all you want. This game got me thinking
that they have more control then we know.

perr
 
Tried to short ESST as per my journal ( the beer report) and I would of made out well had I been able to short it.

Looked at the options but the spread was 50 cents, so that was of no real use for a one or two day swing trade.
 
def,

Thanks for the reply. Actually I doubt that others beat me to the inventory:

Date-----Shares Short---Avg. D. Vol-----Ratio
05/15------204,924----------61,141-------3.35
04/15------120,567--------129,620--------0.93
03/15------135,716--------311,887--------0.44

As you can see from the above table the short interest dipped a little but then actually went up from the time that I wanted to short DIO which would imply that [a] those short are not covering or new shorts are piling in or [c] old short covering is less than new shorts.

I'm using DIO as just an example because it is fresh in my mind. I don't think that doing an audit would yield any positive results. There is a pattern at play and what I am requesting is a bit more attention to it. That's all.

vhehn, DIO didn't have/doesn't have options trading. So it was not a possible alternative to shorting the stock.
 
babak,
thanks. in the past when i've brought up the topic of shorts, the treasury side has been interested in researching specific examples to see if we can improve the list on hard to borrows.
 
def,

well as I mentioned in my original post, I wanted to short DIO around the middle of March 2002. Wasn't possible. I watched it break support at around $6 and waited to see if there was a pullback and whether I could get any on the pullback.

There was a weak one a few days after to around $5.50 but there still were no stocks available to borrow. I checked once in a while as it meandered downward and still no available stock. Until just now when I checked again and there are some available. But it is around $2 now.

Hope that information is enough. I don't remember the exact dates/hour I checked because it was a while back. Please, let me know the results of an audit if they do one.
 
idea for babak - open an account at fidelity or another huge broker. keep just enough to be able to short your average volume of your most expensive stocks. at those brokers you can borrow almost anything, even listed stocks that do 50k/day...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top